The nominal Hokage
by Egregrisiousity
Summary: Hiruzen sees an opportunity to get out of the horrendous paper work leaving the young Naruto with the opportunity of a lifetime.
1. Chapter 1

**The nominal Hokage**

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><p>The Hokage looked thoughtfully at Naruto when the boy declared that he was going to become Hokage. He had only just gotten over his latest batch of paperwork and here this boy at the age of six and only about to enter the academy was declaring that he wanted to take over his duties. A sudden thought brought him out of the blissful dreams of making somebody else do the blasted paperwork: Did the boy even know how to read, or write for that matter? Oh well at least he could give it a try… wait give the boy a chance! Yea that was what he wanted to do!<p>

The Professor wore a poker face as he finally responded to the boy's claim.

"Naruto-kun how about coming by my office after school today and I'll introduce you to the job you want so much."

Naruto nodded seriously before slipping off to class since the lessons of his first day were about to begin, Hiruzen meanwhile went off to file Naruto's clearance level to just above what he had given Jiraya.

Naruto struggled a lot to understand the text the teachers had handed out for them to read but since the Hokage wanted to see him after class Naruto kept at it. Naruto had never had anyone truly teaching him how to read or write but he had been allowed to sit in while the other kids were taught the arts. With the extra motivation Naruto struggled his way through the text and finished along with the other students. Though Naruto didn't understand all the words he had gotten the gist of it. The text detailed the code of Shinobi with more than thirty rules that the teacher told them to learn by heart before the final graduation exam.

Naruto was resigning himself to a career that consisted of much more reading than he had thought when he signed up for ninja life when the Hokage gave him a set of papers as he got to the man's office and asked the boy to make whatever decisions he thought best as the man took the well-earned break to read the latest book his perverted (straight) student had sent him.

The first paper Naruto went through dealt with the idea of passing out field rations to Shinobi to save them the time it took to find food in the wild. Thinking about how one would surely miss the delicious food of the divine that Ramen made out to be he signed it off as a good idea. There were five different proposals for whom to get to make these field rations. Of the advertisements only the one from the Akamichi clan mentioned noodles and meat in the same sentence which was the closest he got to the real thing of those that were there. Naruto could only guess that old man Icharaku was too busy to make field rations to the Ninja of Konoha since his store wasn't on the list.

After putting the stamp Hiruzen had given him with held the man's signature on the proposal Naruto moved on to the next matter.

Naruto was rather horrified to find that several businesses were requesting monetary compensation after his latest masterpiece of a prank. Seeing the ridiculous sums the deserving victims were asking for Naruto went to file them as rejected. As he came to the pile though he saw several categories ranging from "send the responsible to speak with Ibiki" to "ask for a cheaper prize and file again." The one for Ibiki seemed to be rather empty so Naruto conveniently put the papers in the nearly empty box.

Hiruzen looked up an hour later and found his desk miraculously empty for the first time since he got back the office.

As Naruto kept coming back for an hour or so each day the town got increasingly less troublesome to deal with for both Hiruzen and Naruto since the civilian council seemed to spend an afternoon in Ibiki's presence whenever Naruto deemed that their requests for council meetings had silly reasons attached to them.

Hiruzen was rather satisfied so the only papers he bothered to deal with were foreign affairs since starting a war because Naruto misunderstood something would cause far too much trouble.

Danzo was becoming a little scared of his old teammate. The agents he set up to their usual antics within the civilian council kept being sent off to Ibiki along with the rest of the council. With the man growing a backbone out of nowhere Danzo resigned himself to restrain himself to deal with troublesome affairs outside of Konoha.

As Naruto read yet another request for a council, meeting this time packed into much more convolution and respectful terms that went over the boys head that the first ten that he had filed away, he pondered if it was actually important this time. From what the teachers at the academy was telling them about the role of the Hokage he decided that what little he could glean about them wanting to discuss the human rights of civilians really didn't warrant the attention of a military dictator. Besides after the latest request he had received from the name on the request file asking to bar Mitarashi Anko from joining the Jounin exams Naruto was a little suspicious about anything coming from that guy. As he added the file to the growing pile in the Ibiki box Naruto finished the work of the day with a smile and went to read on the technique scroll he had found in the back of the office. In any case the ANBU didn't stop Naruto from reading anything in the office since he had the clearance level, actually he had the clearance level to order them around if he wanted to and Hiruzen was too far off in his own world to do stop Naruto from reading a few techniques.

Naruto got smile on his face as he found a "Kage" version of the technique he was having so much trouble with at the academy. As he managed to make three clones later that evening Naruto had a satisfied expression on his face. Obviously he would need Kage version techniques as a future Hokage of Konoha.

As Naruto got to his patch of work the next day he found it very suspicious that several of the usual civilian troublemakers were requesting that Konoha buy their properties and give them protection details as they intended to leave Konoha. Since the box to Ibiki wasn't full yet Naruto stopped the largest migration since the founding of the village from happening with a set of solidly filed papers. Needless to say any delusions about power that the civilian council had held since the Kyuubi attack went down the drain rather quickly when even their requests to leave Konoha were met with sections in the torture chambers with a strangely happy Ibiki.

As Hiruzen started wondering what other duties he could pile off on Naruto the first thing that came to mind was the mission assignment. Well at least he could let the boy handle it for a few weeks and take it back if the number of casualties started to go up.

Naruto wasn't quite sure what to make of it when Hiruzen led him to another room with a stack of papers that looked a little different from the one that was in the office every day.

As the man lit his pipe and told Naruto to assign the missions to Konoha's ninja, with files being available in a nearby cabinet, Naruto wasn't quite sure what to make of it but a as the future Hokage he would figure it out believe it!

Naruto found it a little strange that people would request ninja to deal with tasks like painting fences or catching a cat but then he had seen stranger requests in the office and at least these people were willing to pay for the service. And if Naruto had learned anything from managing his own finances it was that an additional source of income was a welcome thing.

As he read through the files of the ninja though he found it a little demeaning to have them picking weeds in gardens though. With a sudden thought Naruto decided to send off the simplest ones to the academy as he wrote a quick note about which students were to do what missions. Naruto wasn't being vindictive at all when he decided that the so called rookies of the year that he disliked so much needed to be knocked down a peck or two by cleaning out the Inuzuka compound, at least that's what he told himself.

Picking out the current Genin teams for the toughest D-ranks that even Naruto wouldn't give to academy kids after having done such tasks in his own home there were still three teams to give simple C-ranks. Feeling quite pleased with that Naruto was a little worried when he recognized the wording of people writing suspicious requests and so wrote out a few missions for some of the Jounins to run some fact checking as he put off assigning those missions. Naruto figured that the C-ranks could be done by a couple of Chuunin while he assigned four or five of them to the simple B-ranks. There were still plenty of Jounin available for the complicated B-ranks and the few A-ranks that were in the files so Naruto assigned two of them for each of the A-ranks.

Naruto was pleased to find that the task had only taken him an additional hour letting him off with enough time to practice the kunai throwing that the teacher had introduced them to in class.


	2. Chapter 2

**Uchiha massacre**

(A/N) This story was surprisingly popular and funny to write so I decided to get another chapter out.

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><p>The first sign of trouble Hiruzen found was when he headed to the office two month after he acquired his slav… I mean apprentice. Hiruzen had been wondering when people would get around to repainting the old building but this hadn't been his idea. Hiruzen hoped that the fresh paint played a trick of the light in the morning sun and that the color wasn't… Orange.<p>

Deciding that he must have switched around the pipes again and suppressing a memory of Naruto declaring orange to be the greatest color ever from a few months back Hiruzen picked out his precious book to forget his troubles.

As he looked up around noon and found a similar image spreading around town on every building owned by the village government Hiruzen decided that being in denial was the better part of valor as he fled back to the imaginary world of Icha Icha.

Naruto was feeling rather pleased with his current life. Filing things with Ibiki truly reduced the amount of paperwork he had to deal with the next day as well leading to Naruto's… well continued conduct.

Naruto had been a little annoyed when he found a petition filed in the name of Muziki or Mizuki or something to that effect that requested permission for academy teachers to send disturbing elements out of their classrooms. Once again the wording had been this convoluted language that had Naruto's sights sense of trouble ringing, which made him head to his favorite box of filing to make the trouble go away in a nice and quiet manner. The fact that their teacher no longer had an assistant with him in class didn't really affect the quality anyways so perhaps Naruto should look into removing such troublesome elements all together? A penny saved is a penny earned and all that…

Shrugging Naruto went back to listening to their teacher who was having decidedly nervous tics whenever the blond boy looked his way for some inexplicable reason.

Naruto was betting that the man was simply sensitive to the radiance of awesome that he must be radiating as that the future Hokage of Konoha. It was sensible after all to hire teachers who could spot such things to help better the course of such student's careers.

Naruto smiled as he caught sight of the group of fan girls now sitting in the opposite end of the room from the young Uchiha. The fact that this was the side that Naruto was sitting in assured Naruto that they had surely sensed the radiance of awesome as well though the thought that no one wanted to be near the Uchiha after the boy returned from doing something an ANBU agent had shown up with orders for him to do. The radiating scent of dog poop had simply made Naruto's day while the Uchiha had started having nervous tics whenever he caught side of the patrolling ANBU and had even started avoiding his brother who was behaving in a rather off manner regardless.

Yes Naruto had stopped thinking of such mundane things as the forename of his rival from day one. After all one did not need to remember such a thing to assign "The Uchiha of academy class 1-C" to clean out dog kennels when one was Uzumaki Naruto, believe it!

With this realization Naruto tuned out the rest of the lecture since one surely didn't need to know how to make a smokeless campfire when one could assign rivals to D-rank missions.

As Naruto once more sat in the office besides Hiruzen he took a moment to admire the handiwork he had ordered done to the city before going back to his work. The idea had come when someone told him orange was bad for stealth upon seeing his orange jumpsuit as the academy teacher went on lecture him about how one should pick clothes that fit in with the colors of your surroundings. As Naruto was developing a growing case of bigheadedness he decided that making the colors of your surroundings fit in with the colors he picked for clothes was a much better idea. Yes it was good to be Hokage… Eh Hokage-in-training.

Going to more serious matters Naruto filed away the first thirty papers in a box that Naruto hadn't had the pleasure of using yet which simply said "Request denied." Since the papers all contained complaints about the new decorations and they didn't use convoluted language to make their complaints suspicious Naruto figured whoever this Ibiki guy was he would have enough people to speak to for the time being.

Since nobody had filed anything but complaints about the new color scheme Naruto slipped away with a final wave at the snoozing Hokage-in-denial as he prepared himself to deal with another set of mission requests.

As Naruto looked at the cabinet that contained the files of every ninja in Konoha he came to a pause as he found a whole section that had the Uchiha name on them. Since they didn't go in the part that said "to be matched with missions" but rather had a sign saying "Military police" and a sub-label with "Give missions when needed" Naruto hadn't picked them out yet.

As Naruto looked over the files he was horrified to see the near empty mission records. Being part of the military police seemed to go as an ongoing C or B-rank for all of them which was simply sad compared to Konoha's other Jounin. Yes, Naruto decided, this would certainly count as "Giving missions as needed" as he randomly matched todays entire batch of missions to the underworked clan making sure to save a few nasty D-ranks for the boy in his class. In any case Naruto decided that Konoha's Jounin would need a vacation for another week or two. After all if he as a future Hokage was deemed to need vacations from the academy surely the lesser ninja of Konoha would need one as well. Finding missions of S-ranking for once Naruto found the files of Uchiha Shisui and Fuguka and assigned them to a few of them. After all Konoha's other elite Jounin had at least two or three S-ranks under their belt and it really wasn't fair to the rest of them if these two got off easy.

The Uchiha gathering was rather shocked when ten ANBU members interrupted their meeting in their, oh so secret, meeting place that half the clan headed to once a week. Even as the few ninja who had kept in training frantically started pulling out weapons everyone fell to rest as the ANBU agents pulled out papers rather than kunai after reaching into their pouches.

Itachi was rather surprised at the Hokage's move though he decided that he liked it better than back stabbing diplomacy ninja villages usually engaged in.

Unfortunately the following two weeks would still become known as the Uchiha massacre since actual opponents could care less about their status as an elite clan when seventy percent of the clan hadn't seen combat since the Kyuubi attack.

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><p>(AN) The nice comments are much appreciated.


	3. Chapter 3

**A day in the office**

(A/N) Due to recent dialogue I decided to edit this chapter a little. **  
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><p>Naruto decided to step up his crusade to have Konoha better mask the colors of his clothes when the files for maintaining Konoha's famous training fields. Given that Konoha was literally hidden in the leaves Naruto sent off a note to the Nara clan to experiment with painting trees in a permanent color.<p>

The import of orange paint had already increased by five hundred times since the start of his crusade so Naruto was a little concerned, while other nations were wondering if Konoha had found some part of orange paint that could be used as a poison or something similar and so started buying the stuff for research increasing prices drastically. Well Naruto wouldn't stand for it and so sent the high priority request to the military research facility.

Of course while Naruto was busy finding a solution to his lack of orange he pretty much ignored the growing pile of casualty reports all filed under the Uchiha name with prominent high notes as Fugaku dying from internal bleeding hours after coming back to Konoha, much too Uchiha, yes the man considered his clan name to be an adjective, to go to the hospital since that was for common folks. Since Naruto found the reports distraction he absently sent the files to his favorite by far box to Ibiki. As the intelligence agents received more scarring than most in their careers received over a lifetime they vowed to do a better job in the future.

Hiruzen also ignored the files since he was busy trying out new flavors of tobacco to find something that might make his delusions go away but alas it was to no avail. The infestation of orange kept spreading with every passing day. The professor however would not be known as a quitter as he started mixing the different sorts, a few of them actually let him forget his troubles while the fumes went to his brain.

In any case the deaths of the Uchiha went without note in the minds of those who mattered in both domestic and foreign regions all due to the color of orange.

Naruto decided to let Sasuke have a break when the boy started crying in a corner of the classroom in most of the lessons. Sagely Naruto decided that Sasuke must not be used to the idea of his clan doing actual work for a living and so had broken down in the wake of too many D-ranks.

This realization also kept Naruto from looking into the Uchiha section of Konoha's ninja cabinet of doom, yes Naruto was relabeling stuff at random intervals, as he set the regular force to work again. The fact that he seemed to recognize several of the mission requests from what he assigned to some of the Uchiha two weeks earlier simply had Naruto mumbling about the incompetence of so called combat geniuses as he carefully assigned a sufficient number of actual ninja to deal with the mess the clan seemed to have made of things in just two weeks. Fortunately the power of orange had also made clients forget their complaints as they headed they got to Konoha and simply paid for the missions again after too much exposure.

As the whole debacle wrapped itself up Naruto took a well-earned nap after his though work, believe it!

As Naruto found that Sasuke was no longer crying but still looked sad when he deigned to look his way the following day he decided that assigning his rival more D-ranks could wait a month or so.

As Naruto started juggling kunai to pass the time in the lesson that was really much beneath him he resigned himself to report the little incidents where he dropped a few of the razor sharp knives, yes when one had access to ANBU's stockings one did not use substandard equipment, and seemed to have hit their instructor in the jugular vein as a training accident as he went back to the activity after sending his ANBU guard to find another teacher. Fortunately Naruto seemed to have gotten the hang of the juggling at this point and that cute Hyuuga chick seemed to have missed the whole thing off in her dream world as she was when looking at Naruto so no real harm was done to Naruto's prime source of acknowledgement. In any case the whole thing was really beneath Naruto's notice as he filed the complaints against his person from the teacher's family into the little black box for Ibiki to take care of.

Hiruzen caught Naruto just as the boy was finishing up the mission assignments and realized that there was another thing he could have his sla… devoted servant do for him; the paper work of ANBU. After all as an old man he needed more time to experiment with substances in his pipe… Err take care of his health or something yes. Hiruzen felt quite justified in his use of child labor.

"Naruto could you take care of these things for me please? A future Hokage must be step up to the tasks."

And the job got done.

Now words like assassination or spying or even patrolling had never come up in the lessons Naruto had seen on reading so it wasn't really a surprise when none of them affected him in the stack of additional papers he would have to go through each day. Since these words were a recurring theme Naruto figured that they must be some part of these people's jobs that he really didn't have to worry about as he approved assassinating the second cousin of the Daimyo.

Naruto was a little peeved when the word "seduction" appeared in some folders detailing how it should be used to confirm whether or not somebody was guilty or something such. Really it was the deal with convoluted wording all over again.

Canning the files Naruto rewrote them as straight assassination instead since he found that word to be a pretty one and the same name rarely appeared twice under that directive when he had a quick look through achieve. Really it was the only efficient thing to do.

Despite his cramping hand Naruto went to rest feeling pleased with his lot in life while the special ops spent the night killing people to the point where even Danzo was disturbed.

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><p>(AN) Once again thanks for the nice comments.


	4. Chapter 4

**Meetings and matters of the heart**

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><p>The Haruna matriarch cursed herself for allowing her hopes to get up. The Hokage had accepted an invitation to a council meeting for the first time in six months only for this to happen; he had sent a proxy. And not just any proxy; no he had sent the demon brat and the worst thing was that none of her friends seemed willing to speak up at the travesty. Well she wouldn't stand for it!<p>

Even as Naruto started his carefully planned speech with "In the name of ramen we have all gathered to…" Which was as far as he got before a pink haired woman he thought looked like someone from his class with an "ahem ahem." Recent meetings with the T&I department had taught the woman to refrain from actually screeching her demands.

Naruto looked suspiciously at the one who dared to make use such underhanded coughs to mess with his carefully planned speech on the glory of ramen and how it could make Konoha prosper.

Thinking carefully Naruto wondered if this Ibiki guy who made problems go away wasn't getting lonely again. "Right, the pink haired one will need to talk to Ibiki, that'll calm her down some." Indeed said pink haired one had been looking mightily upset as she actually shook in badly contained rage.

Danzo was grumbling at the unfairness of the proves his old rival had as a Shinobi; when he had finally had the chance to set down a poison trap in the man's council trap just before the beginning of the meeting the man must have caught on and sent the only person in Konoha known for his immunity to all kinds of poison. Really it was like trying to win the favor of the Nidaime all over again with the Sarutobi proving himself at every twist and turn.

As an ANBU agent came out of the shadows and removed the Haruna matriarch from the room the clan heads started to see what was going on. Danzo figured the Sandaime must have been in doubt as to who had messed with the room and so ordered ANBU to take away the first one who acted up. How very clever of him but certainly not good enough to catch _him_, or perhaps it had simply been a warning that the Hokage was no longer messing around?

While Danzo was busy looking for plots within plots in his crafty old mind Naruto went on with his speech. "As I was saying the powers that be in the glorious mix that makes up ramen have granted me a vision of how you could serve to spread the good news. Yes you guessed it. On October tenth we will hold a glorious feast in light of my birthday." Naruto allowed his carefully built up professionalism to fade away as his mouth continued with "believe it!"

The combination of a devotion to ramen and verbal ticks had a third of the council look around fearfully as they thought the boy's mother must have come back to haunt them.

Seeing their fearful expressions Naruto decided that they needed a little reassurance. "Now, now remember; the cake is a lie."

With this brilliant feat of an oration complete with intertextuality Naruto nodded, turned and left the room.

The grave silence that spread around the room as everyone was wondering just what was going on in their suddenly orange home village allowed most of the men to come to their own sad conclusions only a few of which were true. Shikaku Nara was actually the only one to grasp the complete truth since he was the only one who could imagine pulling such move himself if he had been put in the old man's shoes and so didn't think it beneath the God of Shinobi to put their fate in the hands of a six year old.

One of the civilians, the head of a reasonably wealthy trade family, finally stopped twitching from hearing about talking to Ibiki and spoke. "So eh I guess we'll start preparing for this feast of ramen?" The Ninja clan heads were quite disgusted when the other civilians simply nodded along and started making plans.

Hiashi wondered for a brief moment if his timid daughter had been infected with the same drug that the civilian council seemed to have ingested to make her so scatterbrained. As the man took his leave along with the other ninja council members to leave the civilians to their madness, he dropped that line of thought and so would never know just how close to the truth he had been on that matter, if you counted exposure to Naruto as something you could ingest in any case.

Naruto left the meeting just in time to get to Icharaku ramen stand before the evening rush set in. With a great effort Naruto attempted to fill his bottomless pit of a stomach as he thought of the stroke of genius it had been to take the money from the silly things that had been on Konoha's budget, previously going to Root, and put it in a secret account to pay for his ramen expenses. With an astonishing number of eighteen bowls of ramen Naruto set a new record before heading home to actually practice. The Uchiha had after all performed so well with his kunai throwing that Naruto had felt the need to assign him another batch of D-ranks while he set about decreasing the difference between their levels of skill. While his obvious talent at juggling still stood out since no one else really dared to attempt it after the first training accident the fact that Sasuke managed to throw three kunai at once and still the targets had irked Naruto rather badly. So what if the duck-but-haired boy complained about cleaning public toilet stands and picking up trash and dog poop in the park. Everyone had to make sacrifices for Konoha and that stuff built character. As Naruto caught himself cackling evilly he stopped before anyone could hear him.

Thinking of his birthday that would be coming up in a week Naruto felt glad that he had taken the time to instruct his minions to make the additions to the usual fireworks festival. Really without a feast of ramen it could hardly be called a festival anyway.

Before his mind could be set loose on thinking about the delicious noodle filled course Naruto got back to his training experimenting with variations of the way he had seen Sasuke hold three kunai as he threw them at a log.

Hinata looked at her blonde haired crush as he worked with a determination that she could only dream of achieving. Swooning Hinata left before her family could catch onto her stalki… eh training session. Yes training eh… training tracking, stealth and observation yes certainly the heiress would be training the three basics rather than stalking an unsuspecting Naruto. Nodding to herself Hinata set out and actually impressed her father as with her upbeat attitude in their scheduled training session as well as her total disregard for pain as she was off in her dream world wondering how her prince was handling all the pressure and tasks she had seen him busy with. Funny enough she flowed through her stances much more smoothly when her mind was absent as she wasn't worrying that she might hurt her family members in their little spars and allowed her training to take over.

As Hinata stepped up to spar she wasn't looking out for which child to step towards and so ended up facing a disgruntled Neji.

Hiashi watched curiously as Hinata went through a few swooning moves as she slipped around Neji's defenses and blocked his tenketsu with shocking ease. As the boy fell down and had to be carried away to the medics Hinata proceeded to beat three other older cousins with her random movements that none of them managed to read through making the rest stay warily away from Hinata until the practice was called to a halt.

Yes Hiashi decided, it seemed that things were right in the world. When their only rival clan fell into disgrace and his daughter seemed to gain a touch of genius out of nowhere he could deal with an odd kid leading council meetings as well as the insane members of the civilian council.

As the week went by Naruto forgot about the upcoming celebrations came around being busy with training and making sure that Sasuke got as little rest as possible, `really showing him up like that would he, oh yes the boy would see believe it´. Only the notice that the Hokage had left for him saying that the man would be making a speech let Naruto remember as he went to the office after the academy let out early.

Seeing the ramen unseal itself later that evening in the orange surroundings with firework illuminating everything brought proud tears of joy to Naruto's eyes. The crowd wasn't quite sure what to make of it but most followed Naruto's example in eating their fill, though to a lesser degree.

`Yes all was well in the world´ Naruto decided as he ate his fill. Nothing was out of his powers and chicks were all over him, well at least that one with neat eyes had been when he had woken her up from sleeping in class and she hung over him muttering about "Naruto-kun" making Naruto blush rather badly. In short Naruto was the boss, eh man yes man it was believe it!

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><p>(AN) I'm a little shocked that you say you're feeling sorry for little Naruto. Seriously? In any case it's more of a crack fic, as I'm sure you've noticed, and such things as Naruto realizing his responsibilities and true effects on the world just doesn't happen.


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